


Hope in the Air

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 18:56:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3219800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angel has a question: is there a difference between helping others to do something and doing it yourself?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope in the Air

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for child abuse; it's all pretty much on par with what's in canon, but, well, canon. Spoilers through "Where Angels Fear to Tread." Also, yes, all Zer0's lines are in fact haiku.

“Axton,” Angel calls across the ECHONet, once he’s shot down the last frost-crusted bullymong. “I have some news for you.”

“Yeah?” he asks, running one hand over his turret. “Hey, baby, you did good for me. Sorry, not you, Angel. Is it news for _me_ , or is it news for all of us and I’m who you could grab?”

“It’s not personal,” Angel says. His wife is getting remarried, actually, but it would only hurt him to know. She thinks. It seems like it would be easier not to know. “It looks like Jack is going to be off-planet for a few days next week. He has business that works better from an orbital shuttle. Does this afford us any particular opportunities?”

“Beats me,” Axton says, packing his turret up. “I’m a grunt, not a tactician. Hell, my tactics’re what got me kicked out, but I can’t think of anything awesome we could do with that either. I mean, most of what he does, it doesn’t really matter where he is, you know? I can ask Roland, I guess, he’s good at this.”

“Thank you, my friend,” Angel says, and closes her eyes, probing at the Hyperion systems like a loose tooth.

**

“Gaige?” Angel asks, watching the numbers crawl across the insides of her eyelids. Eridium levels, projected timelines. “You love your father, right?”

“Enh?” Gaige blinks, pushing back her hair; she’s curled into a corner of the Crimson Raiders headquarters, her Deathtrap sprawled out in front of her with a plate pried up. “Yeah, I do. My dad’s great.”

“What would you do if he weren’t?” Angel asks, very quietly, her hands spinning in the eridium stream. “What if he needed to be stopped?”

“Hey, is this cause Jack like, built you?” Gaige asks, scratching her nose. She smears grease across the bridge of it. “Look, I mean, I’ve never built anything with actual free will, Deathtrap is maybe about as smart as a dog? So I haven’t really had to think about this, but I totally aced Robotic Ethics, and basically – you don’t owe him anything just cause he built you, you know? You totally belong to you. Like, I’m loyal to Dad, but that’s _because_ he’s great. He deserves it, you know? He took care of me, so if I can, I’ll take care of him. He’s a good guy, so I love him. It’s how it works.”

“And you wouldn’t love him, if he were a bad person?” Angel asks.

“I dunno, probably not.” Gaige tries to wipe the grease off her nose, spreads it across her face. “Did that help?”

 _No._ “Yes, it did. Thank you,” Angel says, and shuts off the communications so she can whimper when the next burst of eridium pulses through her.

**

“Zer0,” Angel says. “I have a question for you.” Her eyes ache, her throat aches, her feet ache. Why her _feet_ ache is a really fu – freaking good question.

“I have an answer. Unless I have no response. I will attempt it.” Zer0 is perched on a loot chest in the back of Scooter’s place, cleaning a gun; he props his feet on the back of a crate, tilting his head. Angel swallows.

“Is there a difference between doing something yourself and helping someone else do it? An… an ethical difference?”

 “I have no ethics. They are extremely boring. I kill for money,” Zero says, wiping down the chamber of his revolver. A little red shape - :/ – pops up on his faceplate.

“Then why are you trying to kill Jack?”

“A fearsome challenge. A worthy opponent, and, he is an asshole,” Zer0 says, and starts slotting his gun back together. “Do you have further inquiries to make of me, not about ethics?”

“No, that was all.” Angel swallows, gazing up at the pipes above her. “Thank you, Zer0.”

**

“Maya?” Angel asks. Maya is curled up in a corner booth of Moxxi’s bar, head bent over a dog-eared book. “May I ask you something?”

Slowly, Maya closes the book, reaching out to set it on the table. She stops, sniffs, and tucks the book into a pocket instead. “Sure you can, I guess,” she says. “What is it?”

“It’s about the monks,” Angel says, and stops – partly so Maya can cut her off if she prefers, partly because she’s due for another eridium shock. Sure enough, it hits just after she stops speaking, making her jolt and hiss a broken sound between her teeth.

“Well,” Maya says. “I can talk about it, if you need me to.”

“Thank you,” Angel says, trying to catch her breath without panting into the audio pickup. “It’s… would it have been easier, if someone else had overthrown them before you did?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Maya says, drumming her fingers on the tabletop. Her fingers trace through a puddle of something; she doesn’t seem to notice, eyes fixed on the far wall. “It was easier to do it myself, I think. It let me put right what they’d done to me, and it let me… it let me stop being what they’d made me into.” She pauses, wiping her fingers on her thigh. “Does that make sense?”

“I think it does.” Angel exhales, twisting her neck, trying to find an angle where it won’t bother her. “Were they… kind to you?”

“They were. I guess they thought it was in their best interests to keep me happy.” Maya sighs. “It was… it wasn’t a good way to grow up. I’m glad I met Lilith; it’s nice to see that a siren _can_ be free, sometimes.”

Angel shuts off the communicator before she can say anything to that.

**

“Hey, Salvador,” Angel says. “I’m sorry, you’re probably the wrong person to ask about this.”

“Enh?” Salvador blinks, pushing his hat off of his face. He’s sprawled out in the backseat of a bandit technical, parked up in the hills. From the way he rubs his eyes, he was half-asleep. “What’s up?”

“I had a question about right and wrong,” Angel says, licking her lips. They’re always dry. She’s not sure if it’s the eridium, or just because of the elevation of the BNK3R.

“Eh, well, what the hell, hit me anyway,” Salvador says, shrugging. “Mi abuela tried to drill some of that into me, I’ll see what I got.” 

“If something’s right when one person does it, can it be wrong when someone else does it?”

“Sounds stupid,” Salvador opines, scratching his nose. “I mean, maybe if someone else is doing it for a stupider reason, I dunno, abuela always had that thing about DON’T KILL PEOPLE JUST CAUSE THEY’RE ANNOYING SALVADOR.” He shrugs.

“But if they’re doing it for the same reasons? More or less?”

“Yeah, doesn’t sound different. Why, you gonna kill someone?”

“I might,” Angel says. “I’m trying to decide.”

“Have fun with it,” he suggests. “Can you shoot a gun?”

“Probably not.” It’s just point and shoot, but she’s seen the kick on some of those rifles he uses. She couldn’t hold one.

“Oof, that’s rough, chica,” he says. “But eh, killing’s still fun.”

“Thanks.” Angel disconnects, looking up at the ceiling. “I don’t think I’m going to enjoy this, Sal,” she says.

**

“Krieg. Krieg?”

“Meat! Meat! Meat!” He’s in the fields outside Sanctuary, throwing his axes at skags. They litter the ground around him, seven now. He aims at another, splitting the head open.

“Krieg?”

He stops with the axe upraised, tilting his head. “PRETTY VOICE.”

 “Yes, Krieg, it’s me.” She swallows. “I don’t know how much you can understand me, but I have to ask someone, and… I think you’ll understand.”

“Beat the little sad one’s problems!” he says, throwing the knife, and cackles.

“Yes, Krieg, I’m sad. If you mean me.” She sighs, staring at her hands. They’re thin, stunted, glowing purple in the light. Small. Pale. “Krieg, if I’m trying to help you kill my father, I’m already a patricide, right?”

He keeps laughing, spearing another skag – another – and then stops, very suddenly. “Kill Jack,” he says. “Kill Jack! Kill Jack kill Jack kill Jack kill the Jaaaaaaack – ”

“I don’t know if that means you know or… if you just hate him,” Angel says, and swallows, “but you’re right. Thank you, Kreig.”

“Kill kill kill! THEN IT WILL BE ALL BETTER! KILL AND FORGET!” Krieg roars, and stabs the last skag.

**

“Dad?” Angel says. They’re off the clock, so she can call him that.

“Yeah, sweetie?” he asks, turning a page in his magazine. He’s leaning back in a chair twice his size, one that vibrates to massage away any muscle cramps he’s managed to acquire. Beside him, a stretch of window shows off the stars, the moon and the moonbase in their orbit, Pandora backlighting the silhouette of his feet. “What’s up?”

“You really like that line about the difference between choking and strangulation, don’t you?”

“Well, that’s because it makes me sound like a badass and it reminds people that I’m smarter than them while they’re dying,” he says, lacing his hands behind his head. “I’d say that’s a pretty good combination, don’t you?”

“I guess.” Angel licks her lips. “They’re both just ways to asphyxiate someone, though.”

“Yes, Angel, I’m glad you know the meaning of fairly basic words,” he drawls. “Was there a point to this?”

“There’s another way to asphyxiate someone,” Angel says. “But you don’t talk about it much.”

“Yeah?” He shrugs, picking up his magazine again. “Enlighten me, sweetie.”

The satellite systems chime. “Warning! Life signs detected. Opening the airlock right now is probably not an excellent idea.”

Jack frowns, looking towards the ceiling. “What?”

Angel says, “Executing phase shift.”

“Override accepted! Venting atmosphere in three... two… one…”

Angel breathes – in through the nose, out through the mouth, steady and sure – and watches her father die.  

Once he’s swollen and still, she wipes her eyes on the back of her hand and opens an ECHO line to Sanctuary.


End file.
